A new flatmate in my tank...

[stu]

Hi Guy's..

I have just (2 months ago) put live plants into my tank and last week found a little snail on the glass, no worries I just took him out and haven't seen anymore till today when I saw another one...

Should I be worried aboout them???

I know that clown loachies will eat them but am worried they may not get on with the other members of the tank.
beening...

peppered cory's
bristle nose cat's (which are the ones I am worried about, ever since they had babies the dad has been very angery towards them and the other members of the tank???)
noen tatera's
guppy's..



the plants seem to be going well and I am just looking at puting a Co2 system in to help them along..

Nabboo...

do you know of any system readlying avaible here in new zealand and where??

[vjvl51]

Hi Stu

As to whether you should worry or not, it depends upon the type of snail. Since you have plants, I would assume that they are the pond snails since the eggs are often imported on the plants. Some people have success by vigorously washing the plants in running water before putting them into the tank. This removes the snail eggs. You would recomend that you do something to control or remove these pests.

I have never heard of a clown loach bothering any other fish. The concern that I have is your stocking. A clown loach will grow to 16 cm. The rule of thumb is 1 inch of fish per gallon of water. (my conversions are usually off) I think that converts to 25 cm per 3.8 liters. (Correct me, Noobon, if necessary) Since you are planning on adding a CO2 system, I wouldn't exceed the rule of thumb unless you plan on finding a new home for the loach later.

Nooboon is away for a few days (due home today some time). I'm sure he'll check this thread and answer your question as to what CO2 system is available in New Zealand.

Vickie

[Nooboon]

Vickie: the conversion is 25 mm or 2.5 cm per 3.8 L, roughly.

Stu: One CO2 system available in NZ is the Nutrafin system. It is a fermentation type system, meaning it produces CO2 from the respiration of yeast or other micro-organisms. It is harder to control the exact output of fermentation systems than those using compressed CO2 and personally I have not seen compressed CO2 versions available here in NZ (though I am sure there are some). Fermentation systems are also MUCH cheaper; I believe the nutrafin system retails here for about $80.

If you do end up using a CO2 system make sure you don't aerate the water during 'lights on' (ie no air pump) as that will remove the CO2 faster than you can add it. Air at night is ok as the plants don't use CO2 then.

Here is a link (http://www.hagen.com/usa/aquatic/addinfo/co2system.html) to more info on the nutrafin product.
If you ask at at your local fish store they MIGHT know what you are talking about.

Also here is another link (http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/) to a NZ based forum that you may be interested in. I haven't used it much but it seems ok. Much more NZ orientated obviously.

Hope the snails don't take over. If you really don't want them in your tank, make sure you remove any you see now before they get established.

[vjvl51]

Thanks Nooboon

This time I wrote the conversion down. Hopefully I will be able to find it the next time I need to use it. ;) You would never believe that Canada is on the metric system the way I do conversions, would you? :EM

Vickie

[Nooboon]

My 2 main hobbies are tropical fish and hunting. Both are largely USA based so I have had to grow used to both systems (shooting distances in yards and bullet velocities in feet/second for example). I must say that the metric system is much simpler once you get to know it.
The only conversions that I can't really remember from the top of my head are the temperature ones.

Try this page (http://badmanstropicalfish.com/conversion.html) next time you need to do a conversion.

[wutangmonkey]

you could just check the thermometer on your aquarium and just kind of get used to what is close to what, any ways thats what i do. example:72f is aprox. 22c
the monk

[wutangmonkey]

But since we are talking about snails, is a small number of small snails good for the tank? They are bottom feeders and hlep remove some of the waste that grows around the tank correct?
I had a couple of rams horn snails that were about an inch and half across (sorry I'm in the only freakin country that hasn't decided to switch to the obviously much simpler system) that quickly grew to two inches and turned into lawn mowers. They had to go, but I have also imported some of the smaller ones out of chance and I was under the understanding that they were at least somewhat benifical, although i guess somewhat unsightly, as long as thier numbers didn't soar.
the monk

[vjvl51]

Monk, some types of snails are good and some are bad. I have ramshorn snails, apple snails (it's almost the size of a small apple) and trumpet snails. All of these are good. Now pond snails - that's a different story. Those things will take over your tank in short order. You don't want them at all.

As to the conversions. I'm alright if I don't convert. I can work in meters for material, C or F for temp (today's high is 33C - HOT), etc but when I have to convert, I have to get a book out to do it properly. I know a liter is bigger than a quart but by how much? Nooboon has been so patient, correcting my conversion mistakes that I admit, I rely upon him to double check.

Vickie

[wutangmonkey]

Really such large snails?
I had the rams horns and all they did was mow down all the plants, they weren't even eating them! They would just come up to the bottom of the plant and chomp it all off, and then I found them fornicating, it was all over then. I gave them to a freind who has a large koi pond and indoor tank. Do you have live plants in your tanks? How how can I identify pond snails? Most of the ones I have look like "tear drops", but that may be incorrect.
the monk

[vjvl51]

Monk, here is a thread where I posted a picture of the trumpet snail http://www.aquariumpros.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1311. The ramshorn snail, you have had, so you know what they look like. The apple snail (or tennis ball snail or Ampullaria) is round and usually grows to half to one inch in diameter very quickly. Pond snails usually are about a quarter inch in diameter and snail shaped (not a good description, I know). Repost if you don't have the trumpet snails, and I will scan a picture of the pond snail and apple snail for you.

I have 2 ramshorn snails in my 75 gallon and one apple snail in my 50 gallon with trumpet snails in both. I have the backs and sides of both tanks planted (corkscrew val, regular val, java fern, java moss, lotus, water lillies, etc). The snails don't seem to bother any of my plants. My apple snail will surround the plant stem with its mouth and bend the plant over but it doesn't seem to bother the plant at all.

Vickie

[wutangmonkey]

Thanks Vickie
but my snails don't look like that they are small and very dark with really rounded shells but not up right like ramshorns. they don't eat the plants though they just hang out in the rocks and gravel and they in the morning come up to the surface ever so often. sounds like the trumpets but the shells are more confined or conch shaped i want to say they roll over on themsleves a bit. And they're not that many of them. I had heard that most snails don't do well in cold water anyhow, is this true?
and I would love a pic of a pond snail if you would be so kind.
the monk

[vjvl51]

OK, Monk

This will have to be two posts as I don't know how to add more than one picture per post (I've never needed to find out).

Here is the pond snail. Remember the picture is a representative of all pond snails from Baensch's Aquarium Atlas. They say "There are both left-spiraled and right-spiraled varieties and the larger ones will eat plants."


Vickie

[vjvl51]

Here's the apple snail. I just measured mine - 3 inches across

Vickie

[AquariumPro]

Hi Monk:

Would it be possible for you to post a picture of your snails?

In each snail species there there can be tremendous variation in shell shape and color. As an example, Vickie's pic of a pond snail shows a very light-colored shell, whereas the species can come in every shade of brown there is. There are also subspecies that may look different.

The best way for us to help you ID them would be to take some pics of your snails and either send them to me at webmaster@aquariumpros.com or post them here.

If you don't see them feeding on the plants, chances are they may be OK and harmless. However, some species of snails are detritavores when they're young and switch to a plant diet as they grow.

[aquak]

One very good snail control is the goldfish. I know! they are not recommended in a tropical tank, but maybe you could borrow one for a little while. They eat small snails, shell and all. My friends have one in their otherwise tropical tank, even with an angelfish, and I give them the extra pond snails that somehow appeared in my fry tank. Their goldfish eats them all! Also, they keep their very large snail off their plants by feeding it lettuce. My ramshorns have never bothered my plants. Maybe yours are really young mystery snails, or whatever those larger ones are.

[wutangmonkey]

man, you guys are all so helpful.
I think i have pond snails they look a lot like that picture. I took notice that the spiral in the shell comes off of the back and not to the side like with the apple snail. Also the pond snail looks more like a "low rider" then the aplpe snail. they are all very small only about a cm (we only use that measurment here when we're describing something under an inch...), and very dark brown very fast but usually underground while the larger ones stay on the water line. I will try to get a pic as soon as I get som efilm to do so.
Thanks guys
the monk oh yeah my goldfish do sbnap at the snails but are still small enough they can't get them off the glass, they are fussy eaters and so far only like prepared food. we are still experimenting to see what else i can add to thier diets, apparently escargo (phonetiks) is not on the menu.

[vjvl51]

Originally posted by wutangmonkey
only about a cm (we only use that measurment here when we're describing something under an inch...),

I'm curious. What country are you from? It is interesting to see different parts of the world represented on one forum.

Vickie

[wutangmonkey]

Youknow Vickie,
the only country that is really pigheaded enough to not change over to the metric system. The country that considers Canadians, "kinda like us but more soft spoken." Your neihbor to the south. The U.S.A.
the monk

[vjvl51]

Monk, I'm a transplanted American - born in a little town in PA. I have family in NY, W Va, MO, Ohio, Indiana, Ca, Kentuky, Nevada, etc. I have dual citizenship and my kids hold citizenship in 3 countries.

I didn't realize that the US was the only country that wasn't metric. This forum is so nice. I learn something new almost every day.

Vickie

[wutangmonkey]

I see.
Well Americas isn't exactly a terrible place, just pig headed.
We are not the only country that hasn't switched, but among the worlds "leaders" we are. But most people have switched over simply because the foot and inch system was a British invention and since Britain and other Euopean contires controled a large portion of the world up to recently, when they switched a lot of the other countries were somewhat forced into that change over, for the better of course.
little bit of world politics for you.
the monk
also will have pictures of snails up by next week.

[oscarbartoni]

Being an American can mean that you live in North, Central or South America but I know that most people , when refering to Americans mean United States of Americans. :HP

[wutangmonkey]

Very true, being an American means being from the Americas, but the U.S.'s egocentrism has changed all of that, so 95% of the time you hear somebody say I'm an American they mean I'm form the U.S.
okay 'nuff of that though. Main point this country is too proud to use the metric system and has opted to use an outdated obsolite measuring system instead. Altough most people I know would rather use the one that everybody else is.
the monk
Also, Aquak, how big were your freinds' goldfish. I have an all goldfish tank and although my fish will snap at the snails on the side of the tank the never eat them. They have pulled a couple off and spit 'em out as soon as they tasted them.

[aquak]

My friends' goldfish is about 3 or 4 inches. (When the US made a serious effort to "go metric" the people resisted because they weren't used to thinking metric. Some gas stations started selling by the liter, but mostly people avoided them. I think this country is egocentric in many ways, but, in this case, it wasn't pride, just stubbornness because they didn't want to go through the trouble of learning a new way of thinking about measurement.) Anyway, this goldfish is big enough to eat neon tetras, too. We didn't think it was, but they kept disappearing. . . . The snails (from my tank) they put in are gone before they hit the bottom, unless there are a lot of them. Even then, most of them don't last long. It doesn't eat the larger ones, but very few of their own snails' babies survive, either.

[stu]

Not that I have any in the tank but I do feed them to the fish now and then...

So I haven't been back since posting the tread.
The only trouble with work is the fact that it gets in the way of my fish keeping (oooh to win lotto...)

Anyway I now go hunting for snails every morning and get two to three of the little buggers every other day.
They dont seem to be doing any harm to the plants or other fish, so I'll get a couple or four clown loaches in a week or two and see if that sort's them out.

thanks for the help guys..

p.s. looks like they are pond snail, small and brown and snail looking (funny that) ;)

[vjvl51]

Stu, I think you should have said that you "opened a can of snails" :)

It's nice to see a thread that is longer than 3 or 4 posts. Thank you for starting this one.

Vickie

[GA Engineer]

There is nothing obsolete about the English system of measurement. I understand that everybody else uses metric, but it is so insanely easy to convert from one to the other that you should not be complaining. A number is a number, and both systems are thoroughly accurate and capable of describing any quantifyable phenomina of science. I often with with both as an engineer in America, and their interchangability is as simple as a table of factors. This has nothing to do with egocentrism, rather a matter of habit. The only tricky conversion into metric is the situation with kilograms, pounds (mass) and pounds (force), which can easily be overcome by a simple understanding of Newton's well-known laws. In fact, the only disadvantage whatsoever with the English system is that it is not based on multiples of 10s. I'm so sorry that muliplying by 12's is so much harder that it blows your brain. This is why I say that people only fear what they don't know, because it takes about 10 minutes to learn the difference between metric and English. Please save your anti-Americanism for another day, and don't do it here. In fact, all these "opinions" have already wasted enough space in this otherwise pleasant and informative forum. Email me if you wish to continue.

Anyways, I have been harvesting those little pond snails for about a year now, and they really don't eat anything but algae and food that settles too deep in the substrate for the corydoras to get. They have always left my Amazon swords alone, as have my plecos. It never fails to amaze me how Zucchini gets devoured instantly, yet my herbivores ignore my plants all day. I'm certainly not complaining! I've always heard that as long as you don't mind the little snails, they don't hurt anything.

[vjvl51]

GA Engineer, I don't think anyone was bashing Americans. It sounded to me more like tongue-in-cheek humour. I often poke fun at myself for converting incorrectly (because I don't look it up) and Nooboon very patiently corrects me. Believe me, many Canadians don't like change. You should have read all the media stories when Canada decided to switch.

I realize that this is a fish forum but a few posts off topic are nice as well (normally they are posted in the Refugium forum, I admit).

I agree that the pond snails, when I raised them for a puffer, didn't seem to bother the plants. They just multiplied soooo fast that the puffer was well fed. Some books show plant leaves with holes from the pond snails. I would imagine that, like everything else, is a matter of what is available to eat. If there isn't enough other things to eat, then plant leaves are food.

Vickie

[Lucy]

a) it isn't "insanely easy" to convert from imperial to metric, for one, you need to know which multiplier to use for the unit you're trying to convert and then you have to do the math, which isn't usually simple either because the multipliers are not easy like 2s and 5s.

b) it's not that hard to mulitply by 12 but that's just inches to feet. Ounces to pounds, fluid ounces to cups/pints, pints to a gallon, quarts to a gallon, feet to a yard etc are not based on 12 and that's completely ignoring that there are two different values for a pint.

c) the rest of the countries that have converted over *didn't* have to change habits? That's where the egocentricism comments are coming from. Everyone who's making them came from a country where the population DID change their habits, so the U.S.'s stance that "it's a habit, we dont need to change" is going to seem like a copout.

Not only is the base 10 between everything (which makes it intuitive) consistent with the basic way we enumerate things, but volume, mass and distance are all related. A mililitre is a cubic centimetre of water, so is a gram.

I wouldn't say the imperial system a useless system, because it does measure things just fine, but, for example, the advantage it gives students to have things based simply and easily understandable would make subjects like math and geometry (which enough people have trouble with) so much easier to grasp.

I don't think there's a need to take this somewhere private, as long as we're all adults and civil I think it could be very interesting to discuss. Especially the point you made about it being the fear of the unknown. You didn't list one reason why the imperial system is superior, only that it's habit. That doesn't seem to imply that it's the countries with metric systems that have the fear of the unknown...

[Nooboon]

I couldn't have put it all better myself Lucy, that was perfect. Thanks.

I think that the resistance to change is simply habit. I, for example can relate to feet per second as a measure of velocity; metres per second is different. I know what 1 metre per second is but it has no relativity. I know a bullet traveling at 3000 fps is pretty fast but is 500 mps fast? Who knows?
By the same token, my father still compares fuel economy of vehicles in miles per gallon in a country where fuel is sold by the litre and car speedometers read kilometres.

What I am trying to say is that it can be difficult to change because we lose the relativity of our old units untill we become familiar with the new system.
But someone has to make the change somewhere!

The US has the advantage of being such a huge country (in terms of geography, population, and most importantly economy) that it can resist change without putting itself at risk (they don't feel the pressure to change). In fact I would put forward that it is only due to the US that the imperial system still exists at all today, otherwise it would be gone within one generation (and for the better, as Lucy points out).

[GA Engineer]

I'll admit, there is no advantage of the Imperial System over metric, but either system works well, and they are perfectly interchangable. The only time I get frustrated is when numbers are haphazardly mixed units. The best example of this is GM vehicles, where half of the bolts are metric sized, and half are English sized. You're right about the volume/weight compatibilites, but that, too is just a number away with Imperial. Being used to both systems, I don't loose a step because as long as you know that 1 ft^3=7.48 gallons=62.4 lbs (water), then you're all set.

[Lucy]

Well that's the thing, you're obviously mathematically inclined given your line of work. Lots of people wouldn't be able to remember that nor multiply it without a calculator. I'm not trying to keep arguing with you saying that one is better than the other, but for a LOT of people the conversions are not as easy as you feel they are.